13th Sunday C

This passage is a turning point in Luke’s Gospel. This Sunday’s passage from Luke is about commitment.  First and foremost is Jesus commitment. Jesus had to this point preached and taught and worked miracles in Galilee.  He was well received by the majority of people.  Now he must journey to Jerusalem, the seat of power where people would be more hostile toward him.

    As Jesus sets out on this journey he sends messengers ahead of him.

But they are not received because they are journeying through Samaria to

Jerusalem.  In the view of the Samaritans Jesus is going to the wrong

place (Jerusalem) and they need not show him hospitality.   Between the

Samaritans and Jews there was intense hatred.   This was the sin of

racism.  It is nothing personal against Jesus, he is a Jew.  The sin of

racism is alive and well in our world.  The sons of thunder’s response

is to call down fire.  Our equivalent of sending them to hell. “Jesus

tell them to go to hell.” This is the sin of being a fanatic. But Jesus rebukes them.  When he sent the 12 he told them to go, and where received stay, where rejected, move on. He not only says this but here he does what he says.   The importance of

saying and doing the same thing.  Not to have the contradiction.  Later

on in this Gospel Jesus will highlight the Samaritans in a very curious

way.  He will make a Samaritan an example not of badness but of

goodness.  He will tell the parable of the Good Samaritan.   And he will

also say that of the ten lepers cured only one will give him thanks and

that man is a SAMARITAN.

    A first person comes to him and says he wants to follow.  Jesus

tells him that the foxes have the lairs and the birds of the air their

nests but the son of man has nowhere to lay his head.  He is telling

them that following him means a certain sense of insecurity.

     A second person comes and wants to bury his father.  Jesus’ words:

Let the dead bury the dead.   What does that mean?   The obligation to

bury people was strong to the Jews.   As we look at Jesus life we see

him present when Lazarus is buried, when the widow is going to bury

her only son he raises him up.  This passage should probably be understood to mean that this man intends to defer the matter of following Jesus to a distant future when his father dies as an old man.  The man is saying to Jesus, “surely you don’t expect me to violate the expectations of my community?”  Yet this is precisely what Jesus requires.

    Then a third person will come who requests permission to say good

bye.  This more properly should be understood as a request to take leave of his parents or ask for their permission to leave.

In the first reading Elisha had made the same request of Elijah.

Elijah had granted the request.  But then Elisha had made a complete

break.  He slaughters the twelve oxen (he must have been wealthy).  He

makes a fire with the plow and then has a meal, a despedida.  He then

commits himself to the following of Elijah completely.   Jesus is more

demanding than Elijah.   Whoever sets his hand to the plow and turns

back is not worthy of the Kingdom.  Jesus is also saying that the following of him will be difficult work.

    In each of these three brief stories we do not know what the response of the person is.  The first and third person come volunteering to follow Jesus.  The second person was summoned by Jesus.

We would seem to be called to examine our sense of commitment to following Jesus.  He was steadfast in beginning and continuing his journey to Jerusalem.  We have had our moments of commitment to Jesus at some time in our life, or we can perhaps make it now.  We should ask for the grace to be steadfast in our commitment.

    We get a sense of how radical it is to follow Jesus.

We all have the remarkable ability to say we want to follow Jesus and

then do what we want.  Jesus is telling us that this should not be so.

    Interesting to me that Michael Sean Winters writing for NCR is calling the U.S.bishops to civil disobedience.  Wouldn’t that be something.  Their published response to the present crisis is woeful.

   ( To foil Sunday excuses a wit proposed that we supply the following: beds, cotton, hearing aids, fans, blankets, food, invite relatives, grass and plants, poinsettias and lilies, etc.  We Must look at our excuses. )